Tensen battle, round 1, fight!
This episode is largely dedicated to Sagiri, Yuzuriha, and the latter’s assigned executioner having to battle the Tensen who casually flicked our friendly tree guy’s head off at the end of the last one.
At the start, the Tensen is toying with the groups, though it takes an interest in Yuzuriha as her ninja arts are evidently based on the use of Tao, and a type (apparently it has types) similar to the one this particular Tensen uses. It tries to tempt her by saying she should study under it, but Yuzuriha, for all her faults, is smart enough to just keep on fighting.
As the battle continues, Sagiri gets the information on the weakness of the Tensen at their “root” and attempts to cut it, but with her pathetic Tao she can’t manage… so she engages her special breathing technique, which spikes her Tao to absurd levels and lets her do seemingly permanent damage to their foe, since her type is this Tensen’s weakness.
The fight continues for several more exchanges until Sagiri is afforded an opportunity to get a should-be-fatal cut in and, in fact, the Tensen falls down and seems very dead for quite some real time.
Before the end, though, with Sagiri feeling weak from her unknowing use of Tao techniques, the Tensen does very suddenly revive. It stabs the heavy-set scholarly Asaemon with flower barbs (it was aiming for Yuzuriha, but he stepped in), essentially offing him, and Sagiri and Yuzuriha, now down an ally, face a dire round 2 against the flower monster form, which is when the blind Asaemon comes in to cut vines and end the episode.
Along the way, we get a few other elements of import. One is that no such thing as the “elixir of life” exists. The Tan elixir that the Tensen make from people grants them life and vigor, but evidently just turns normal humans who consume it into trees (which bodes poorly for the bandit king not seen this episode) The other element is that, while Sagiri is feeling weak after making her cuts, when we briefly cut to Gabimaru, he collapses in the wake of having gone all out. Tao, it seems, is not kind to use heavily with little practice.
I’ll keep this one short and say that… Hell’s Paradise continues to be pretty decent, so any further griping not addressed last week will be saved for the real end.